Hillside Strangers' Upholstery Shop

Author: Jewls Krueger

Between October 17, 1977 and February 17, 1978, cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr. abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered ten young women and girls in Los Angeles County. Nine of the ten murders took place inside Buono's auto upholstery shop and attached home at 703 East Colorado Street in Glendale, California.

Because the victims' nude bodies were repeatedly dumped on hillsides across the Glendale, Eagle Rock, and Highland Park areas, the local press dubbed the unknown killer, who was originally believed to be one man, the "Hillside Strangler."

Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi

Kenneth Bianchi & Angelo Buono - Public Domain

Angelo Anthony Buono Jr. was born on October 5, 1934, in Rochester, New York. When he was five, his parents divorced and his mother moved him and his sister to Glendale, California. He was a delinquent from an early age, dropped out of school at 16, and racked up a long juvenile record for larceny and auto theft. As an adult, he married four times, fathered eight children, and was reported to be physically and sexually abusive to nearly every woman in his life. By 1975, he had built a modest but successful auto upholstery business at 703 East Colorado Street in Glendale, where he also lived alone.

Kenneth Alessio Bianchi was born on May 22, 1951, also in Rochester, New York, to a 17 year old sex worker and adopted at three months old by Buono's aunt, Frances Scioliono-Bianchi, and her husband Nicholas. Because Frances was Buono's father's sister, the two men were technically adoptive cousins, but they had been close as children. In January 1976, at the age of 24 and drifting through a string of security guard jobs and small time thefts, Bianchi moved to Los Angeles to live with Buono, who was then 41. The two quickly began working together as pimps, forcing young women into sex work out of Buono's home.

The "Hillside Strangler" Murders

Victims Delores Cepeda & Sonja Johnson - Public Domain

By the fall of 1977, the cousins had graduated from pimping to murder, reportedly after two of the women they had been pimping escaped and after they were sold a fraudulent "trick list" of clients by another sex worker. On October 17, 1977, they picked up 19 year old sex worker Yolanda Washington, raped her, and strangled her to death. Her body was found the following day on a hill near the Ventura Freeway.

Over the next four months, Bianchi and Buono killed nine more young women and girls, ranging in age from 12 to 28. They typically posed as undercover police officers, using fake badges to gain their victims' trust, and lured them into Bianchi's car. The women were then driven back to Buono's Colorado Street upholstery shop, where they were bound, raped, and tortured, sometimes with attempted electrocution or injections of household cleaning chemicals, before being strangled to death with cords. Their bodies were washed, wiped down of forensic evidence, and dumped nude on hillsides across the region.

The known Hillside Strangler victims are: Yolanda Washington, 19; Judith Miller, 15; Lissa Kastin, 21; Jane King, 28; Dolores Cepeda, 12; Sonja Johnson, 14; Kristina Weckler, 20; Kimberly Martin, 17; Lauren Wagner, 18; and Cindy Lee Hudspeth, 20.

The Arrest and Trials

By early 1978, Bianchi had grown paranoid and moved north to Bellingham, Washington to be with his girlfriend Kelli Boyd, who had just given birth to his son. On January 12, 1979, Bellingham Police arrested Bianchi for the strangulation murders of two Western Washington University students, 22 year old Karen Mandic and 27 year old Diane Wilder, whom he had lured to a home for a fake house sitting job.

Bianchi initially attempted to establish an insanity defense by faking dissociative identity disorder under hypnosis, inventing an alter ego named "Steve Walker." Court appointed psychiatrist Dr. Martin Orne quickly determined he was faking. Facing the death penalty in Washington, Bianchi entered a plea deal in October 1979 in which he pleaded guilty to two murders in Washington and five in California, agreeing to testify against Buono in exchange for life sentences instead of execution. On the morning of October 22, 1979, Los Angeles authorities arrested Angelo Buono at his home and upholstery shop at 703 East Colorado Street.

Buono's trial began in Los Angeles Superior Court on November 16, 1981 and lasted just over two years, making it at the time the longest criminal trial in California history. Bianchi's own testimony against Buono spanned roughly six months of the trial. On November 18, 1983, Buono was convicted on nine of the ten Hillside Strangler murders. He was sentenced on January 9, 1984 to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He died of a heart attack at Calipatria State Prison on September 21, 2002 at the age of 67. Bianchi is currently incarcerated at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. He was denied parole in 2010 and again in 2025.

The Hillside Strangler Shop Today

The former Buono's Auto Upholstery building still stands at 703 East Colorado Street in the Citrus Grove neighborhood of Glendale, California, about one block west of Glendale Avenue and roughly six miles north of downtown Los Angeles. The 2,230 square foot commercial property sits on a 6,197 square foot lot and has been operated as a small independent auto repair and service shop under multiple names in the decades since, most recently doing business as A to Z Auto Service and later A 1 Auto Repair. The property last sold in November 1994 for $132,000.

Interested in seeing the Hillside Strangers' Upholstery Shop in person? Take the tour →

The murders took place inside the 703 East Colorado Street property, where Buono both lived and worked. The structure has been substantially altered and reused over the decades since.

The current business is a private, working auto shop. Please be respectful of the current owners, staff, and customers, stay on the public sidewalk along East Colorado Street, and do not enter the property or attempt to interact with employees.